Growth performance (body weight, standard length, body width and depth) and survival of three red tilapia (Oreochromis spp) strains from Malaysia, Taiwan and Thailand were evaluated using 2,867 records collected on individually tagged fish after a period of three-months of communal rearing in an earthen pond. The statistical model used to analyze the data included strain, sex and their two-way interaction as fixed effects and age from stocking to harvest and initial weight as linear covariates. The effect of strain was highly significant for all body traits (P 0.05). Our results suggest that there are genetic differences in growth performance and survival among red tilapia strains from Malaysia, Taiwan, and Thailand. They are thus being included in a complete diallel cross to further examine the additive and non-additive genetic performance of the strains before forming the base population for future genetic selection. In this paper, we present an outline and key activities of the planned genetic improvement program for red tilapia in Malaysia.